The pity of it all

In Hitch-22, which I just finished reading, Christopher Hitchens uses the title here to refer to the German-Jewish relationship. To me, considering his physical suffering at the moment, it refers to a personal journey no one should have to undertake. I can't really think of philosophy and existentialism and geo-politics when every page of this memoir is tainted with the author's mortality in such an ironic way, a way he no doubt appreciates better than his reader: Memoir as swan song. Nobody wants one so near the other.
I can't watch CH's interview with Anderson Cooper (who has had his own share of tragedy yet manages to enquire about CH's health in an awful monotone) because it is not pity I am moved to, it is rage. And I want to know why CH hasn't shaved his head, and looks instead as though he has seen death approaching and it has a capital D unlike the god in his indictment on religion. god is Not Great is more readable, by the way, than this almost dried-out dissertation on a life well-lived; it reads like a political treatise rather than a riveting understanding of a man widely reviled and admired; what an opportunity squandered when it is after all in his own words.
But of course, it reads. You get a first-hand understanding of Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis and Edward Said among others, (but the tone is awed, much like Oprah who remains star-struck even though she is a star herself), and you do get a fairly accurate, If Sahara-like, insight into the mind of their mutual, sorry, common friend, but it is laced with the pauses that hint of moist if not downright juicy bits being in the stuff left out. It is not the houses we wanted to know about, Hitch, it is "the spaces between the houses".
But still, nothing CH writes is without merit so it will be part of my library. If there only had been a god, I could have kept space for more of his work.